For the record: Mabou Mines’ latest theatrical spectacle is called “Red Beads” and transpires mostly in midair. Its component parts include flowing aerial choreography, wind-and-silk puppetry, an original score performed live by choral singers and orchestra, and an unsettling, even creepy fairy tale.

The fairy tale concerns a girl on the brink of puberty, who flirts brazenly with her father and regards her mother as a rival. On the eve of her 13th birthday, the daughter demands that her mother turn over her strand of red beads (which come to symbolize ripe sexuality). The Daughter is played by the 20-something Clove Galilee. Ms. Galilee’s real-life mother, the actress Ruth Maleczech, plays The Mother. Ms. Galilee’s father, Mabou Mines co-founder Lee Breuer, directs. And Polina Klimovitskaya, with whom Mr. Breuer also had a child, wrote the fairy tale.

Yet despite all its ticklish undercurrents (or partly, perhaps, because of them) “Red Beads” is an extraordinary collaborative work of art – a bona-fide enchantment brimming with luminous visuals. Take, for instance, the image of a girl in a long white dress gliding through the air, her long golden hair shimmering in the cool light, her toes slicing the vast open air like a swimmer in water. Or the macabre sight of The Father (Rob Besserer) hanging from a harness, spinning by his neck.

The piece’s striking images are the work of many hands. Basil Twist (“Symphonie Fantastique”) devised the silk puppets, which spring to life when hit by gusts of wind. Mr. Twist’s creations possess the same irrefutable logic as a fairy tale: a yellow silk scarf is unquestionably a bird, and those red silks are flames. In “Red Beads,” fabric mesmerizes, whether it’s a 15-foot-long diaphanous red skirt or a half-acre of billowing white sheeting, all spectacularly lit by Jennifer Tipton and Mary Louise Geiger.

But this is an extravaganza for the ears as well as the eyes. The tale is read piecemeal by a quivering disembodied voice, with the onstage characters speaking their own dialogue. Singers repeat the text, which is sometimes also projected. Ushio Torikai’s score lies in wait just beneath the surface, never too loud, its eerie atmospheric layer punctuated by operatic bursts.

This, then, is the setting: a river of disquieting music, over which the characters fly, feet dangling, silk clothes trailing in the wind. Beneath them, unobtrusive black-hooded factotums carry puppets and fans. Given the size of Mr. Breuer’s paintbox, one can’t help wishing he’d had a stronger story to illustrate – especially at the end, when Ms. Klimovitskaya’s tale wanders off into complications that are intended to provoke but are merely confusing. There are other problems – the composition can be overly busy and distracting, and the Greek chorus can’t shake its vaguely undergraduate air. And it can be jarring to glimpse a guy dressed like the grim reaper dragging an extension cord across the stage.

But all these objections vanish during the tale’s best moments, when the insistent, willful daughter refuses to go quietly. She tries every trick in the book to draw Daddy in – begging him to help her bury her dog, making breakfast for two, running away. When those don’t work, she hurtles toward the inexorable clash with her mother.

The psychosexual current here is key, but Mr. Breuer’s overall debt is as much to Bergman as to Freud. He is under the spell of the puppets – so much so that at one point he even borrows the Ningyo-buri device of having a human dance the role of a puppet. The dance is just one example of Mr. Breuer’s uncanny ability to alloy one art form with other, foreign elements, creating something bigger and far stranger. At moments, one can almost hear his finger tapping against the partition that divides daily life from the collective unconscious.

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In Andrew Wyeth’s iconic 1948 painting, “Christina’s World” (the inspiration for Tamar Rogoff’s new dance theater piece starring the film actress Claire Danes), Christina sprawls in a field, her back to the artist. So much the worse for us, because Ms. Danes, whose expressive face is her best asset, proceeds to spend the better part of her hour-long solo show with her back to the audience.

When Ms. Danes’s face does come into view, one can glimpse a vivid interior life in her eyes – which is impressive, considering how little help Ms. Rogoff’s choreography gives her in reconstructing the world of Christina Olson, a woman who suffered from a debilitating muscular disease but swore off wheelchairs. Here Ms. Danes mostly performs the kind of movements that require two healthy arms and legs. The exception is an ill-conceived video sequence, in which Ms. Danes crawls across First Avenue in a black dress with spaghetti straps.

The very nature of the solo show, with its lone performer, tends to blow some of the pixie dust off the theatrical experience. Each time the room goes black, there’s a tendency to think, “Gee, I wonder what Claire’s up to.” Alas, the answer is, more of the same. The only bright spots are those intense eyes, beckoning us to a place where Ms. Rogoff’s dance isn’t going.

“Red Beads” until September 24 (566 La Guardia Place, at Washington Square South, 212-992-8484).

“Christina Olson” until September 24 (150 First Avenue at 9th Street, 212-477-5288).